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B. Toys
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Sensory Description
Permanently attached pieces and bright colors are ideal for a child who has a visual impairment.
Play with this toy does not have a specific duration, enabling children to play at their own pace and as their attention span permits.
Children who are blind or have visual impairments learn to coordinate the movements of their hands and arms through use of toys like this.
The toy is very tactilely pleasing and provides significant tactile stimulation.
Hands are busy playing and therefore less likely to be used for self-stimulatory behaviors.
This activity cube is large. It captures and maintains a child’s attention.
The activity cube is a one-piece unit. There are no separate parts to fall or lose.
The wooden pieces make manual sounds when spun on the metal wires.
The wooden pieces are all uniform in texture.
Skills
Coordination of hands and arms can be practiced while playing with this toy.
Hand-eye coordination is utilized to move the beads and animals.
The beads on the wires help children develop a pincer grasp. This fine motor control can help hone skills needed for holding and writing with a pencil.
Play Ideas
Be sure to talk about everything you and the child are doing to reinforce communication.
Have the child describe each item by feel.
Play a guessing game. Have the child close his eyes and touch an animal. Give him clues, such as “this animal says, ‘quack’.” Have him guess what it is. Take turns, so he is asking you and giving you clues as well. This helps work on memory and recall skills as well as receptive and expressive language.
Tape pictures that have high contrasting colors behind the doors of the activity cube.
Adaptation Ideas
Add textures such as fabric or sandpaper to the activity cube and its attached pieces.
Add Braille stickers to the animal blocks.
Use this toy in a quiet room to lessen external distractions during play.
Communicative Description
This toy can stimulate children with autism by offering spinning, movement and colors. This toy can help a child with autism use his self stimulation of spinning objects to incorporate functional skills.
This toy is visually stimulating and attracts children’s attention.
This toy can provide opportunities for pretend play.
Play with this toy does not have a specific duration, enabling children to play at their own pace and as their attention span permits.
Toy is durable, resilient even during rough play and contains no loose pieces.
This activity cube is large. It captures and maintains a child’s attention.
The activity cube is a one-piece unit. There are no separate parts to fall or lose.
Skills
Imaginative concepts can be promoted with the animals and beads.
The size of the toy provides opportunities for children to play in close proximity with one another. It can help the progression from parallel play to cooperative play to social interaction.
The pictures and objects can help a child cognitively process what it is and verbally label each piece.
The beads on the wires help children develop a pincer grasp. This fine motor control can help hone skills needed for holding and writing with a pencil.
Visual tracking skills are used to move beads along the wire. This is a pre-literacy skill.
Play Ideas
Make noises for the animals.
Make noises when the beads are moving along the wires.
Point to and name the animals.
Take turns pushing the objects on the toy.
Push objects to someone on the other side and anticipate and prepare your body for its return.
Create pretend situations using the objects as the subject of the story.
Play a guessing game. Have the child close his eyes and touch an animal. Give him clues, such as “this animal says, ‘quack’.” Have him guess what it is. Take turns, so he is asking you and giving you clues as well. This helps work on memory and recall skills as well as receptive and expressive language.
Talk about everything you and the child are doing to reinforce communication.
Verbally identify each animal on the wooden blocks. Identify the letter that each animal starts with. Note: the animal pictures are in alphabetical order, but there are no letters printed on the blocks.
Create a goofy animal using the spinning animal puzzles and then tell a story using the goofy animal as the subject.
Adaptation Ideas
Put the actual name of the animal on the shape with a permanent marker or label maker to encourage word identification.
Use only one side at a time to simplify for the child. To assist this, use a blanket or sheet to cover the top and other sides. Tuck the sheet under the activity cube to maintain its position.
Use this toy in a quiet room to lessen external distractions. To further assist focus, turn off the overhead lights in the room and shine a lamp directly on the activity cube.
Cognitive Description
This toy introduces concrete concepts such as object identification in a playful, nonthreatening manner.
This toy can be played at different levels, offering many levels of mastery.
Play with this toy does not have a specific duration, enabling children to play at their own pace and as their attention span permits.
This toy has a simple concept and is easy to understand.
This activity cube is large. It captures and maintains a child’s attention.
The activity cube is a one-piece unit. There are no separate parts to fall or lose.
There are three animal disks that slide down zigzag tracks. The tracks have graduated difficulty to
manually zigzag the disks up to the top. Children can begin with the easiest and progress to more advanced as their skills develop.
Skills
Moving shapes, sliding beads and opening doors helps increase eye-hand coordination.
Object permanence can be strengthened when playing with the animal pictures hiding behind the “peek-a-boo” doors
Toy induces problem solving skills. For example, child must learn how to move the beads along the wire tracks to move them from one side to the other
The spinning blocks have pictures to help build early literacy skills like object recognition.
This toy teaches spatial relationships when the child maneuvers pieces through the different openings.
The different fine motor activities provide a great opportunity to build hand coordination, skills and strength.
Children can work on fundamental skills such as colors, numbers, shapes and objects.
The beads on the wires help children develop a pincer grasp. This fine motor control can help hone skills needed for holding and writing with a pencil.
Counting skills can be incorporated into play as children count the number of beads, blocks or animals.
Simple parts-to-whole concepts can be explored using the two animal puzzle blocks.
Matching skills can be encouraged by matching the animal puzzle blocks or matching the ducks or rhinoceroses on the top of the activity cube.
Visual tracking skills are used to move beads along the wire. This is a pre-literacy skill.
Play Ideas
Use this toy as an opportunity to teach concepts; in/out, shape recognition and animal identification.
Have the child find a specific animal.
Name the objects and colors that can be found on the toy.
For added surprise, tape different pictures behind the doors for children to discover.
Make a matching game by taping two sets of animals behind the four doors.
Identify animals with similar attributes such as point to all the animals that have fur, all that have scales, all the mammals, all the animals that can be found in a zoo, etc.
Conduct an experiment. Place all the animal disks on the top of the vertical paths. Let them go and see which one is fastest. Discuss why.
Adaptation Ideas
Use only one side at a time to simplify for the child. To assist this, use a blanket or sheet to cover the top and other sides. Tuck the sheet under the activity cube to maintain its position.
Use this toy in a quiet room to lessen external distractions. To further assist focus, turn off the overhead lights in the room and shine a lamp directly on the activity cube.
Physical Description
Children who are not yet standing independently can hold onto this sturdy toy.
The toy has rounded corners.
Since the pieces are permanently attached, the toy is stabilized and pieces won’t fall off.
The large size and weight of this toy will help a child stabilize his body during play.
Play with this toy does not have a specific duration, enabling children to play at their own pace and as their attention span permits.
Skills
As children manipulate the attached pieces, they will naturally incorporate wrist rotation.
Large size of toy encourages reaching and arm extension.
Eye-hand coordination is incorporated as children manipulate the objects.
Children practice balance as they reach across or through the holes.
This toy can help promote fine motor development by pushing the attached beads, opening doors, sliding wooden disks and spinning wooden blocks.
The beads on the wires help children develop a pincer grasp. This fine motor control can help hone skills needed for holding and writing with a pencil.
Different hand positions and control can be used to spin horizontally and vertically attached blocks and maneuver animals and beads on the top.
Children can use an isolated finger to spin individual wooden blocks. This can help them develop pointing skills.
Play Ideas
Take turns pushing the objects on the toy.
Push objects to someone on the other side and anticipate and prepare your body for its return.
Tip the activity cube on its side to help a child with physical limitations access and play with the bead mazes.
Adaptation Ideas
A caregiver can sit or kneel on the floor to physically assist the child.
Set toy on a table if child cannot reach the toy.
A child who cannot physically play can press a button that has “switch” recorded on it. When the button is pressed, the other children, who are playing with the toy, must switch places to another side.
DESCRIPTION:
One-piece, large, wooden cube has activities on each side and bead mazes on the top to keep children’s hands and minds busy developing many useful skills such as fine motor, problem solving and eye-hand coordination. Zany Zoo features wooden spinning blocks, animal disks that slide down zigzag tracks, peek-a-boo doors, bead maze and animals that move along winding paths. BPA-free and lead-free.
Manufacturer Website: justb-byou.com
Approx. Price: $89.99
Box Age Range: 1+ yrs
# of Pieces: 1
Washability: Surface Wipe
Storability:
Directions: None
Play Locations: Indoor
Adjustability:
Levels of Play: Four Levels
Batteries: None needed
Features and Benefits
High Quality Soothing Detailed Provides Visual Cues Hands-on Approach to Learning Provides Pretend Play Opportunities Easy to Grasp/Hold Wooden Pieces Familiar Objects/Pictures Different Shapes and/or Colors Self-Contained One-Piece Unit Simple Game Variations/Many Levels of Play Versatile Upright Position for Play Incorporates Fundamental Learning Skills Fosters Imagination/Promotes Creativity Open-ended Wide Age Range Visually Stimulating Tactilely Stimulating Auditorily Stimulating High Contrasting Colors Durable Oversized
Developmental processes promoted
Object Permanence Action Concepts e.g. In/Out, Push/Pull, On/Off, Go/Stop Fine Motor Hand and Finger Grasp Eye-Hand Coordination Patience Spatial Relationships e.g. Under, Over, On, Off Reaching/Arm Extension Letter Recognition and Identification Functional Finger Movement and Exploration Pre-Literacy Coordinated Movement Imagination/Pretend Play Problem Solving Finger and Hand Control and Dexterity Physical Range of Motion Tactile Discrimination Two-Handed Play – Midline Focus and Transferring Precision Wrist Rotation Pointing, One Isolated Finger Balance Motor Planning Self Esteem Matching Sequential Thought Cooperative Hand Movements Visual Acuity Color Recognition and Identification Cause and Effect Early Literacy Word Recognition Sorting and Classification Language Development Memory and Recall Auditory Processing Visual Processing Visual Tracking Visual Attention Object Recognition and Identification
